ME/CFS Australia (SA) Inc supports the needs of sufferers of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and related illnesses. We do this by providing services and information to members.

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Two unrelated fibromyalgia patients recently encountered problems in public places because of their service dogs. The patients, a woman in Connecticut and a woman in Texas, were told they could not have their dogs inside the buildings and were denied service. Both of these incidents are potential violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Rita Abrego suffers from fibromyalgia and several other health problems, but her service dog is an important part of her life. KSAT reports that Selene, a maltipoo, helps her cope with pain and anxiety. However, an employee at Herredero Mexican Restaurant in Alamo City told Abrego she could not have the dog inside and refused to serve the woman food. Abrego was forced to call the police and suffered an anxiety attack because of the incident. The restaurant owner mentioned that she was not aware of maltipoos being allowed to be service dogs. In addition, the owner admits she did not think Abrego was disabled because her health problems were not obvious.

Immune signatures in blood point to distinct disease stages, open door to better diagnosis and treatment

NEW YORK (Feb. 27, 2015)—Researchers at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health identified distinct immune changes in patients diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, known medically as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) or systemic exertion intolerance disease. The findings could help improve diagnosis and identify treatment options for the disabling disorder, in which symptoms range from extreme fatigue and difficulty concentrating to headaches and muscle pain.

These immune signatures represent the first robust physical evidence that ME/CFS is a biological illness as opposed to a psychological disorder, and the first evidence that the disease has distinct stages. Results appear online in the new American Association for the Advancement of Science journal, Science Advances.

SANTA FE, N.M. — TOO often, doctors don’t understand chronic fatigue syndrome. They don’t know how to diagnose it, and they frequently even believe that patients with the disease are just whining or suffering from psychological problems. This needs to change.

That was the message from the Institute of Medicine’s recent report on the illness, which proposed new criteria to diagnose it and recommended ditching the syndrome’s confusing and demeaning name. The proposed alternative: systemic exertion intolerance disease, or S.E.I.D.

As a patient for 16 years, I’ve dealt with plenty of doctors who were ignorant about the disease. So my questions were: Will this work? Is a report from one of the most prestigious bodies in American medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, enough to make doctors take the disease seriously? Will patients get diagnoses faster and be treated more effectively?

Sometimes you’ve got to ask where is it going to stop with fibromyalgia (FM) and the brain? Reductions in the volume of “gray matter” (the neuronal cell bodies and glial cells as opposed to the long nerve fibers) have been found in the insular, anterior cingulate cortices and the amygdala in the brains of FM patients. Other issues have been found in the thalamus, the basal ganglia, the parahippocampal gyrus, the premotor cortex, motor cortex, the somatosensory cortices and the prefrontal cortex in the brain. Other abnormalities have been found in the connections between various parts of the brain.

This Florida group was looking to add another brain region to the list: the hippocampus, a part of the limbic system that plays an important role in short-term memory (remember that?), long-term memory (generally thought to be intact) and “spatial navigation”. The hippocampus isn’t directly involved in the production of pain but a breakdown in hippocampal functioning could lead to a “feed-forward” process that ends up disrupting the limbic system and the pain networks in the brain.

Quick synopsis of book: A mom uses a jar and some marbles to show her son how she goes about making decisions about what she can and can’t do in terms of activities in a day. He can take part in the decisions. She is physically limited by chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Very complex concepts are simplified in a colorful children’s book. Though her body is limited, her love for her children has no limits.

By relaxing the threshold for cluster formation, we showed that the T1w signal is elevated with increasing CFS severity in the ventrolateral thalamus, internal capsule and prefrontal WM.

Earlier reports of WM volume losses and neuroinflammation in the midbrain, together with the upregulated prefrontal myelination suggested here, are consistent with the midbrain changes being associated with impaired nerve conduction which stimulates a plastic response on the cortical side of the thalamic relay in the same circuits.